Welcome to the next stop in our adventure learning about Children Around the World! This week, we are in the Pacific Islands! (To see all our previous stops, check out our Children Around the World landing page!)

Learning about the Pacific Islands made for a particularly interesting week with our Winter Promise Children Around the World curriculum. I really enjoyed how this week’s chapter in the Children of Many Lands spine book that came with our curriculum was about a child from the Philippines who went on a missions trip with her family to Papua New Guinea. This was a very creative way for us to be able to learn about two very different parts of the Pacific Islands.

We also found this fabulous video of a Tongan men’s choir. All my kids loved it, especially my boys, and begged to watch it again and again!

Several of us weren’t feeling very well this week, so most of the rest of our activities consisted of lazing around, reading books about the Pacific Islands. Here are some of the ones we enjoyed:

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• Ian and the Gigantic Leafy Obstacle by Sheila Miller – This is a fun story for little ones about the power of prayer. It takes place in Papua New Guinea.
• Dua Means One: Learn to Count to 10 in Fijian by Penelope Casey – This is a fun one for us because dua actually means “two” in both Indonesian and Malaysian so that was kind of weird!
• Ella Daniella, Books 1-4 by Nancy Lynn Cook – This series of early chapter books was absolutely loved by Littlenificent, who is reading so well now. I’m so proud of her and was glad to find this series on Kindle Unlimited about a little American girl who moves to the Philippines. It seemed to be right at her level, and she actually read them several times each.
• Call It Courage by Armstrong Sperry – This book was part of Bignificent’s Sonlight core learning about the Eastern Hemisphere that she is also doing this year.
• A Question of Yams by Gloria Repp – Bignificent particularly loved this missionary story from Papua New Guinea.
• The Boxcar Children: The Black Pearl Mystery created by Gertrude Chandler Warner – This takes place in Hawaii, and we decided that counts as a Pacific Island! 🙂
• Peace Child by Don Richardson – I love this story so much!

One final book we started this week was Island of the Blue Dolphins by Scott O’Dell. We had intended to read this book when we learned about the United States, but we ran out of time that week as we really wanted to try out the new Here to Help Learning literature adventure for this book. I figured the island it takes place on is IN the Pacific Ocean so it sort of counts as part of the Pacific Islands, right? And we’re studying Mexico right after the Pacific Islands, and California and this island used to be part of Mexico so it actually worked out ok.

Anyway, my kids love Here to Help Learning’s writing program SO MUCH, so they were very excited to try this. Thankfully, it lived up to their expectations and we really enjoyed it! We flew through the unit in about 3 weeks because we were moving on learning about Children Around the World, but we really didn’t do it justice. This Literature Adventure from Here to Help Learning is fabulous, and I will definitely allot at least 5 weeks the next time we do it. I have never been a big fan of literature units as the girls and I prefer to “just read” and we don’t usually want to slow down and analyze a book, but I highly recommend this literature adventure! It is so well done and added so much to our learning! From touring one of the neighboring islands with Mrs. Mora, hiking, snorkeling, and visiting a cultural museum, it’s really great! I also appreciated the emphasis on character and serving others humbly. I highly, highly recommend this literature adventure, and since access to it is included with the low monthly fee for Here to Help Learning’s amazing writing program, you really can’t beat the price!

Well, that concludes our adventure learning about the Pacific Islands! It was a good week and definitely piqued our interest to learn more. Thanks for joining us!

To read about our other stops, check out our Children Around the World landing page! Next up: Mexico!